Wish List: A Practical and Accurate Way to Predict Earthquakes

Sunday, Nov. 11, 2012 Geoelectric changes may help 'predict' quakes: researchers Kyodo Researchers claim to have found a correlation between the occurrence of earthquakes in the Izu Island chain and subtle changes in subterranean geoelectricity, a finding that one day might help develop techniques for predicting temblors. The team, consisting of researchers from institutions including Tokai University and Tokyo Gakugei University, analyzed the relation between small changes in geoelectricity around Kozu Island, located 170 km southwest of Tokyo, and quakes in the vicinity with a magnitude of at least 3.0, based on data gathered between May 1997 and June 2000. The geoelectric data were collected during this period through about 20 electrodes buried at intervals of between 100 and as much as 3,000 meters around Kozu. The team studied temblors that struck within 20 km of the island, according to a study published online by a prestigious U.S. science journal. The researchers observed 19 anomalous changes in the strength and movement of geoelectric currents, 11 of which were proceeded by 3.0-magnitude or stronger quakes within 30 days — a 58 percent rate of occurrence, they reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. "This rate of probability is statistically significant," said Toshiyasu Nagao, a Tokai University professor who coauthored the study. "There is debate over the existence of precursors to earthquakes, but (this study) indicates that some may exist." The researchers said they excluded geoelectric anomalies caused by factors such as lightning strikes and the sun when determining this rate of occurrence, and reported that a total of 23 temblors with a minimum magnitude of 3.0 struck during the period they examined. They selected Kozu because of its remoteness and distance from any urban environments, which generate a variety of noises that can effect geoelectricity levels. Their technique is similar to the so-called VAN method, which was developed in Greece to predict earthquakes based on seismic electric signals. However, scientists have mixed views on the VAN method's effectiveness and purported 60 percent success rate for forecasting temblors.

Now THIS is Scary

The science isn't in place yet for accurate predictions. It's like suing the weatherman if a tornado touches down. Italy Orders Jail Terms For 7 Who Didn’t Warn Of Deadly Earthquake By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO Published: October 22, 2012 ROME — Seven prominent Italian earthquake experts were convicted of manslaughter on Monday and sentenced to six years in prison for failing to give adequate warning to the residents of a seismically active area in the months preceding an earthquake that killed more than 300 people. Speaking in a hushed courtroom in L’Aquila, the city whose historic center was gutted by the April 2009 earthquake, the judge, Marco Billi, read a long list of names of those who had died or been injured in the disaster before he handed down the sentences to six scientists and a former government official. The defendants, who said they would appeal the decision, will also have to pay court costs and damages of $10.2 million. The seven, most of them seismologists and geologists, were members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, which met shortly before the quake struck — after weeks of frequent small tremors — but did not issue a safety warning. The verdicts jolted the international scientific community, which feared they might open the way to an onslaught of legal actions against scientists who evaluate the risks of natural hazards. “This is the death of public service on the part of professors and professionals,” said Luciano Maiani, the current president of the risk commission, according to the news agency ANSA. The legal and media pressure prompted by the trial have made it impossible to carry out professional consultancies for the state, he said, adding, “This doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world.” Thomas H. Jordan, a professor at the University of Southern California, led a commission that after the disaster advised the Italian government about better ways to communicate earthquake risks to the public. He described the verdicts as incredible, “given that they have just convicted scientists for basically doing their job during a time of crisis.” “I’m afraid it’s going to teach scientists to keep their mouths shut,” he added.

Self-Induced Earthquake in Dallas?

The process called "fracking" is controversial. Here's a good reason to stop doing it: Unusual Dallas Earthquakes Linked to Fracking, Expert Says By Eli MacKinnon, Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer | LiveScience.com – 3 hrs ago Three unusual earthquakes that shook a suburb west of Dallas over the weekend appear to be connected to the past disposal of wastewater from local hydraulic fracturing operations, a geophysicist who has studied earthquakes in the region says. Preliminary data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) show the first quake, a magnitude 3.4, hit at 11:05 p.m. CDT on Saturday a few miles southeast of the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport. It was followed 4 minutes later by a 3.1-magnitude aftershock that originated nearby. A third, magnitude-2.1 quake trailed Saturday's rumbles by just under 24 hours, touching off at 10:41 p.m. CDT on Sunday from an epicenter a couple miles east of the first, according to the USGS. The tremors set off a volley of 911 calls, according to Reuters, but no injuries have been reported. Not a coincidence Before a series of small quakes on Halloween 2008, the Dallas area had never recorded a magnitude-3 earthquake, said Cliff Frohlich, associate director and senior research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics. USGS data show that, since then, it has felt at least one quake at or above a magnitude 3 every year except 2010. Frohlich said he doesn't think it's a coincidence that an intensification in seismic activity in the Dallas area came the year after a pocket of ground just south of (and thousands of feet below) the DFW airport began to be inundated with wastewater from hydraulic fracturing. During hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," millions of gallons of high-pressure, chemical-laden water are pumped into an underground geologic formation (the Barnett Shale, in the case of northern Texas) to free up oil. But once fractures have been opened up in the rock and the water pressure is allowed to abate, internal pressure from the rock causes fracking fluids to rise back to the surface, becoming what the natural gas industry calls "flowback," according to the Environmental Protection Agency. "That's dirty water you have to get rid of," said Frohlich. "One way people do that is to pump it back into the ground." In a study he recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Frohlich analyzed 67 earthquakes recorded between November 2009 and September 2011 in a 43.5-mile (70 kilometers) grid covering northern Texas' Barnett Shale formation. He found that all 24 of the earthquakes with the most reliably located epicenters originated within 2 miles (3.2 km) of one or more injection wells for wastewater disposal. The injection well just south of DFW airport has been out of use since September 2011, according to Frohlich, but he says that doesn't rule it out as a cause of the weekend's quakes. He explained that, though water is no longer being added, lingering pressure differences from wastewater injection could still be contributing to the lubrication of long-stuck faults. "Faults are everywhere. A lot of them are stuck, but if you pump water in there, it reduces friction and the fault slips a little," Frohlich told Life's Little Mysteries. "I can't prove that that's what happened, but it's a plausible explanation."

Geology of Mt. Fuji--an eruption on the way?

Friday, Sep. 7, 2012 Quakes added to eruption risk on Mount Fuji Kyodo Mount Fuji's magma chamber came under so much pressure from the Great East Japan Earthquake and one of its aftershocks last year that it could very well erupt, researchers said Thursday. However, the jump in pressure is not the only factor that could cause the volcano to blow, and no signs of a pending eruption have been detected, the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention said. Mount Fuji most recently erupted in 1707 but under the same circumstances. At the time, the rise in pressure caused by the preceding quake, which hit right before the eruption, was weaker than that caused by last year's quakes, the group said. Based on the tectonic movements caused by the magnitude 9.0 quake that struck off the coast of the Tohoku region in March 2011 and the magnitude 6.4 quake that followed four days later, the researchers estimate that about 1.6 megapascals of pressure were placed on the magma chamber, which is thought to be some 15 km underground. That's equivalent to an atmospheric pressure of some 15.8 kg per sq. cm. In the past, 0.1 to several megapascals of pressure have been enough to trigger volcanic eruptions, including at Mount Fuji, it said. Although conditions in the magma chamber vary, 1.6 megapascals is "not a small figure," said Eisuke Fujita, a senior researcher at the institute.

Digging Deep at Plate Boundary

Sunday, May 27, 2012 Vessel drills deep in 3/11 quake area Kyodo SENDAI — A deep-sea drilling vessel has collected rock samples from 820 meters below the seabed near the epicenter of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology said. The maritime research agency said Friday the samples could be from an area forming part of the fault that triggered the magnitude 9.0 earthquake, and that analyzing them could help predict future major quakes off the Pacific coast. An international research team led by Kyoto University conducted the drilling aboard the Chikyu deep-sea exploration vessel in an area 200 km from the Oshika Peninsula in Miyagi Prefecture, the agency said. The samples are the first taken from below the seabed at the boundary of two plates in the Japan Trench, which lies off the Tohoku region, it said.

Viva the Northwest Passage

How many centuries have explorers waited for this to become possible? Thursday, May 24, 2012 Ministry panel to study new Arctic Ocean trade route Jiji The transport ministry plans to set up a panel of experts to study the potential new trade route to Europe via the Arctic Ocean, sources said Wednesday. The envisioned northern sea route would be around 40 percent shorter than traditional routes to Europe via the Strait of Malacca, the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal, and would thus also help to cut fuel costs and carbon dioxide emissions. The route has attracted mounting global attention in recent years, as the decreasing volume of Arctic sea ice due to global warming has increased its viability.

What about rising sea levels?

One of the questions concerning the submerged ruins off Yonaguni island is this: did they submerge slowly or suddenly? No one knows for sure, but the question matters to today's coastal dwellers. As for today's rising sea levels, global warming accounts for part of it. Water expands as it warms, and the volume of the sea increases as glaciers melt. A new report says there is more to it than those two factors. Tuesday, May 22, 2012 Riddle of rising sea levels said solved AFP-Jiji PARIS — Massive extraction of groundwater can resolve the puzzle over rising sea levels seen in past decades, Japanese scientists said Sunday. Global sea levels rose an average of 1.8 mm per year from 1961 to 2003, according to data from tide gauges. But the big question is how much of this can be pinned on global warming? In its landmark 2007 report, the U.N.'s Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ascribed 1.1 mm per year to thermal expansion of the oceans — water expands when it is heated — and to meltwater from glaciers, icecaps and the Greenland and Antarctica icecaps. That left 0.7 mm per year unaccounted for, a mystery that left many scientists wondering if the data were correct or if there were sources that eluded them. In a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, a team led by Yadu Pokhrel of the University of Tokyo says the answer lies in water that is extracted from underground aquifers, rivers and lakes for human development but is never replenished. The water eventually makes its way to the sea via rivers and evaporation in the soil, they noted. Groundwater extraction is the main component of additions that account for the mystery gap, according to their paper, which was based on computer modeling. "Together, unsustainable groundwater use, artificial reservoir water impoundment, climate-driven change in terrestrial water storage and the loss of water from closed basins have contributed a sea-level rise of 0.77 mm per year between 1961 and 2003, about 42 percent of the observed sea-level rise," the paper said. The probe sought to fill one of the knowledge gaps in the complex science of climate change.